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hearts4youz · 7 months

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The Captains Daughter: Chapter 4

A/N Heyyyyy- Thank you all so much for reading and liking the previous parts :D I appreciate it sooo much. Hopefully yall like this chapter :) Comment if u want to be added to a taglist.

Word count: 872

Ghost pov:

At 4:00 sharp Y/N exited the locker room, she spotted me from across the gym and walked over, I met her in the middle.

remember, be friendly not bitchy

"Hello Y/N, how was your day?"

This better work soap

She looked bewildered at my question

"G-Good?" She hesitated, looking around, possibly scanning for some sort of trap.

"There's no catch, I just thought I should act friendlier towards you." I confessed

"Okay-" she slowly nodded her head

An awkward silence followed

"Lets begin," I said

She nodded her head as I walked off in the direction of the agility course. Y/N padded along beside me. The silence still felt awkward.

"So where were you stationed before coming here?" I asked her

"Anchorage, we were mostly a port for shipments, a bit of classified work too, you know, with Russia being less than 100 miles away."

"Alaska?"

"Yeah, weathers better here."

I laughed at her un-funny joke, just to break the ice.

We reached the ladder leading up to the first stage of the course, a leaderboard posted at the bottom.

"Your not on here lieutenant, I thought you were supposed to be athletic with those... muscles." She paused before the last word, my cheeks turning a dusty rose color at her mention of my body. Thank fuck for this mask.

"A big, bulky guy like me isn't the most agile," I told her.

she hummed.

"I'm going to time you, lets do 5 sets of the entire course, three minutes rest in between each." I explained

"Go!" I commanded.

She dashed up the ladder with decent speed, swinging across the hanging ropes with ease. She stepped across the moving bridge without hesitation, her foot slipped at one point. most at least stop to calculate the timing or something.

Daring, I noted.

I didn't like that trait for her, too dangerous. She should have at least stopped to analyze the situation first.

I watched her complete the first stage, scaling another ladder. She came across an obstacle that required you to jump a fair distance onto it, then use your full arms strength to pull yourself up to a platform. I pursed my lips when she struggled to pull herself up. Her arms quivered, face contorting into a grimace, finally she slipped and fell into the safety net.

"Climb down," I yelled up to her

She threw her head back and groaned, crawling across to the ladder and descending it.

"I almost had it," Y/N pouted.

"Change of plans, Lets do an arm workout."

She sighed and followed me over to the weights.

"Since we're being friendly now, why don't you tell me a bit about yourself," she suggested.

I scoffed, "what do you want to know."

"When's your birthday," she began.

"May 18th."

"Favorite color?"

"Black."

"Music preference?"

"I don't listen to music"

"Birth year?"

"1994"

"Why do you wear that mask?"

Reader pov:

Ghost looked like he just saw a ghost.

You awaited your answer.

"This is a bench press," he said gruffly. Effectively changing the subject.

You ignored his lack of response and instead listened to his explanation on how to bench.

He demonstrated with a few reps. He made the 45 pound bar look like a pencil with his large, work-hardened hands and massive biceps. He had turned from awkwardly friendly to cold and reserved again. I shouldn't have asked about his mask, you thought.

He motioned for you to repeat after him. You used to train arms 3x per week for Track and XC but your conditioning has faded, even after joining the army. Ghost told you to do 3 sets of 10, with no weight on the bar. The first set was easy enough although, You had severely underestimated what not working arms for months would do. Halfway through the second set, Your shoulders burned. Your form went to shit and you were breathing heavily. Ghost took notice and helped guide the bar up and down.

You blushed at the close proximity of you and him, hoping he would mistake it for your exhaustion and not your lack of male attention for the last year and a half. Your old base had kept men and women strictly separated. You barely finished the third set.

Without a word, he moved on to the racks of dumbells. You could sense his anger at being asked such a personal question.

"Look, I'm sorry for aski-" he cut you off.

"Save it," he snapped. Not even bothering to look back at you as he began to curl impossibly large weights. You grabbed two, ten pound weights and followed, matching his pace and motions.

After a few sets he switched the motion, exercising a different muscle. He continued this cycle until finally re-racking the weights and moving on to other machines. You followed him wordlessly, until finally he looked at you and muttered, "Dismissed." You would have missed it if you hadn't been listening to him. Silently hoping that he would turn towards you and crack a joke, or accept your apology, or at least to give you feedback.

But no.

The mysterious lieutenant brushed past you and exited the gym. Leaving you all alone.

Taglist: @abbiesxox

#captain price #cod 141 #cod mw2 #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #task force 141 #cod ghost #cod x reader #ghost call of duty #ghost cod #simon riley x reader #y/n #cod fanfic #cod #ghost #ghost smut

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paganimagevault · 6 months

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Tomb of Yu Hong 592-598 CE. Link to my blog at bottom with more sources and description of individual images.

This is probably a Sogdian tomb. Interestingly, the man has a haplogroup that was widespread amongst the blue-eyed Mesolithic/Neolithic Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG are probably where blue eyes originated from) and the haplogroup is found today most prominently in Sami, Finns, and Estonians. His wife has a haplogroup found prominently amongst East Asians. Based on her East Asian origins and the inclusion of some Turkic-looking people in the tomb's artwork I would assume she was probably a Turk, herself. The long-haired men without halos (e.g. panel 4) are probably Turks, that was a typical appearance for them during this time period. Men from other surrounding populations such as the Sogdians, Huns, Tocharians, etc. typically kept shorter hair that didn't go past their shoulders. More info:

"The man buried in the tomb went by Yu Hong (Chinese: 虞弘; pinyin: Yú Hóng; Wade–Giles: Yü Hung; 533–592 AD), with Mopan (莫潘) as his courtesy name, who was a Central Asian, probably of Persian or Sogdian origin, and practiced Zoroastrianism. He had settled in Early Middle Period China during the Northern Qi, Northern Zhou and Sui dynasties. This tomb is so far the only archaeological find in the Central Plains region that reflects Central Asian (Western Regions) culture. The epitaph found in the tomb records that he was a noble of the city of Yü-ho-lin / Yuhelin (尉紇驎) in the mysterious Yu country (魚國), assumably for which he is named, because the two characters 虞 and 魚 are homophones.

According to the epitaph, Yu Hong started his career in service of the nomadic tribe at the time, known as Ruru. At the age of 13, he was posted as an emissary to Persia by the Khagan of Ruru, as well as Parthia, Tuyuhun and Yuezhi. Later he went on a mission to the Northern Qi, Northern Zhou and Sui dynasties. He served as chien-chiao sa-pao fu / jianjiao sabao fu (檢校薩保府, lit. “acting director of the office of Zoroastrian affairs”, or “Sogdian affairs”) during the Northern Zhou period. The term sa-pao / sabao (薩保) comes from the Sogdian s′rtp′w, means a “caravan leader”.

He had later served as a provincial governor in the Sui dynasty government, a chieftain of the Central Asian people who had settled in China during that period. Yu Hong died at the age of 59 in 592 AD. His wife survived him by six years, and was buried in the same grave in 598 AD.

A study on ancient DNA reveals that Yu Hong belonged to the haplogroup U5, one of the oldest western Eurasian-specific haplogroups, while his wife can be classified as haplogroup G, the type prevalent in East Asia.

The age of U5 is estimated at between 25,000 and 35,000 years old, roughly corresponding to the Gravettian culture. Approximately 11% of Europeans (10% of European-Americans) have some variant of haplogroup U5.

U5 was the predominant mtDNA of mesolithic Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG) [this is where blue eyes probably originated from].

U5 has been found in human remains dating from the Mesolithic in England, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, France and Spain. Neolithic skeletons (~7,000 years old) that were excavated from the Avellaner cave in Catalonia, northeastern Spain included a specimen carrying haplogroup U5.

Haplogroup U5 and its subclades U5a and U5b today form the highest population concentrations in the far north, among Sami, Finns, and Estonians. However, it is spread widely at lower levels throughout Europe. This distribution, and the age of the haplogroup, indicate individuals belonging to this clade were part of the initial expansion tracking the retreat of ice sheets from Europe around 10,000 years ago.

U5 was the main haplogroup of mesolithic European hunter gatherers. U haplogroups were present at 83% in European hunter gatherers before influx of Middle Eastern farmer and steppe Indo-European ancestry decreased its frequency to less than 21%.

Today, haplogroup G is found at its highest frequency in indigenous populations of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk. It is an East Asian haplogroup. Haplogroup G is one of the most common mtDNA haplogroups among modern Ainu, Siberian, Mongol, Tibetan and Central and North Asian Turkic peoples people (as well as among people of the prehistoric Jōmon culture in Hokkaidō). It is also found at a lower frequency among many other populations of East Asia, Central Asia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. However, unlike other mitochondrial DNA haplogroups typical of populations of northeastern Asia, such as haplogroup A, haplogroup C, and haplogroup D, haplogroup G has not been found among indigenous peoples of the Americas."

-taken from Wikipedia

#sogdiana #indo european #ancient china #ancient history #antiquities #history #art #museums #sculpture #statue #ancient #turkic #eurasian #finnish #estonian #finno ugric #genetics

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mariacallous · 4 months

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In the summer of 2023, Gleb Aleksandrov, a self-proclaimed doctor from Russia with a history of charging patients for ineffective “treatments” such as singing folk songs to them, set up shop in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. But according to an investigation from the Kyrgyzstani news outlet Kloop, Aleksandrov’s clients are far from the only people his new venture could endanger: he also claims to be producing drones for the Russian military in a facility that shares an address with his health center. Meduza shares an English-language adaptation of the story.

The Dmitry Rayevsky Psychology and Health Center in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has a rating of 4.3 out of five stars on the digital map service 2GIS. Most of the comments are good; one user says the center helped him overcome depression, for example, while another says it helped her get through a tough divorce.

But when the comments are bad, they’re really bad. “One person had a tumor, and his parents refused chemotherapy. Psychologists at this clinic worked with them, and the tumor actually grew. Another mother lost her child,” reads one. Another simply says: “My aunt died because of you.”

For anyone familiar with the past work of the health center’s founder, these reviews are unsurprising. “Dmitry Rayevsky,” whose real name is Gleb Aleksandrov, began his career in Russia, where he referred to himself as a “doctor-innovator,” a “political scientist,” a “patriot,” and an “oncology psychologist,” all while claiming noble ancestry. Charging up to 1.5 million rubles ($16,400) for his services, he “treated” autism and cancer with methods such as singing folk songs and placing his hands on people. And when his patients occasionally died in agony, he blamed their “evil auras.” According to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, Aleksandrov ran a “cult” in the Moscow region, “brainwashing” his followers into selling their own apartments and giving him the money.

Aleksandrov’s schemes were widely covered in the Russian press, with at least six TV segments devoted to them and multiple news stories published online. One woman from Yekaterinburg gave a detailed account of how the quack doctor had “sent her son to the next world.”

The reporting eventually led state investigators to get involved, and in early 2023, Aleksandrov’s “miracle clinic” in Moscow was shut down. In the fall, the authorities opened two felony cases against him. But by then, Aleksandrov was one step ahead: he had already opened a network of “clinics” in Kazakhstan, and he had big plans in Kyrgyzstan — ones that went beyond the medical field. In July 2023, he registered a business called the Valkyrie Construction Bureau at the same address as his Psychology and Health Center.

The doctor diversifies

In June 2023, a job vacancy for an electronics engineer appeared on the classified ad website Headhunter.kg. According to the listing, the new employee would be tasked with “organizing drone production in Bishkek.” The ad was posted by someone named Yevgeny Anatolyevich Boldyrev, whose profile on the site includes a link to the website Judging from financial records, both companies appear to have been just as hollow as his promises of curing cancer. This domain name belongs to a Moscow-based LLC called Valkyrie Construction Bureau, which, according to the site, manufactures “aircraft, including space vehicles, and related equipment.” The site also lists military drones available for purchase.

The Valkyrie Construction Bureau’s social media pages say the company makes combat drones for the Russian Armed Forces. Dmitry Rayevsky (that is, Gleb Aleksandrov) is listed as a co-founder, while Yevgeny Boldyrev is named as the head of the operation. Boldyrev’s email address, [email protected], suggests he has close ties to the phony doctor. Elsewhere on the Internet, he refers to himself as a “student” of “Rayevsky.”

It’s clear from open sources that the Valkyrie Construction Bureau registered in Bishkek is linked to the company registered under the same name in Moscow. This means that the drones Gleb Aleksandrov plans to build in Kyrgyzstan will likely be used to kill people in Ukraine.

“Unmanned aerial vehicles are widely used in tactical military operations for things like artillery targeting, reconnaissance, observation, and monitoring,” Rayevsky said in a 2022 interview about Valkyrie in the Russian news site Novye Izvestia.

“We’re making drones for close-range reconnaissance up to five kilometers that are invisible to the enemy’s radar and resistant to various weather conditions,” said Valkyrie’s chief engineer, Alexander Kozlachkov, in a 2022 article about the company. “We’re also working on cargo drones capable of carrying up to 10 kilograms and staying in the air for up to two hours. They’ll be able to traverse quite long distances to break through enemy bunkers.”

Of course, there’s also a chance the Valkyrie Construction Bureau’s drones will prove to be just as much of a sham as his cancer treatment methods. But that doesn’t mean the operation will be any less harmful to Kyrgyzstan.

An uncanny resemblance

After reviewing the drone models for sale on the Valkyrie website, journalists from Kloop concluded that the company is likely not producing drones at all, but instead purchasing and reselling foreign devices under the guise of manufacturing them.

Valkyrie’s V-Coptr Falcon, for example, looks extremely similar to one made by the U.S. company Zero Zero Robotics, which has offices in China and Taiwan.

The EVO II Dual 640T V3 offered by Valkyrie resembles one made by the Chinese company Autel Robotics, which has branches in the U.S., Germany, Italy, and Singapore.

The photo provided by Valkyrie of one of the reconnaissance drones it offers is actually a screenshot from a video of a radio-controlled aircraft made by the Chinese company Skywalker Technology Co., Ltd., though the product details listed on the Valkyrie site differ from those of the pictured device.

An employee at the Dmitry Rayevsky Psychology and Health Center told Kloop that the business’s workers came to Bishkek from Russia but that “Dmitry Rayevsky” himself rarely travels to Kyrgyzstan. The employee did not know anything about the drones that are supposedly being manufactured at the health center’s address.

A lifetime of lies

It’s no coincidence that Gleb Aleksandrov chose Kyrgyzstan for his purported drone company. According to websites run by his past victims, Aleksandrov was born in Frunze (the Soviet-era name for Bishkek). His family soon moved to the Russian city of Smolensk, where he first claimed to be descended from nobility and began using the pseudonym Rayevsky.

On Telegram, where he has nearly 100,000 followers, Aleksandrov is a vocal supporter of the war against Ukraine. His enthusiasm for Russia’s military aggression appears to date back at least to the annexation of Crimea, during which he founded an LLC called Development of Crimea and Sevastopol Industrial Construction Holding and another called Crimea Industrial Consortium Trading House. Judging from financial records, both companies appear to have been just as hollow as his promises of curing cancer.

But whether Aleksandrov is lying about Valkyrie manufacturing its own drones or not, the company could still have consequences for Kyrgyzstan: the E.U.’s 12th package of sanctions will reportedly carry tough penalties for third-country companies helping Russia circumvent them.

In August 2023, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez asked Kyrgyzstani President Sadyr Japarov to better regulate the flow of goods to Russia to prevent defense-related items, including drones, from entering the country. In response, Japarov said that the export of drones is against the law in Kyrgyzstan. The outlet Economist.kg, however, was unable to get an official response from the Economic Ministry about whether such a ban is really in place.

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kfruityouth · 17 days

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alright alright okay so

this line kind of implies that sydney's rejection (to put it lightly. sydneys near-murder of him.) is enough reason for him to return to his home country. i wonder whats waiting for him there? maybe hes just got no where else to go now?

this line here...

...tells us that he emigrated to america, presumably with his family..? but then why would he go back to russia, if his family is all here? just to run away from everything that happened? does he know he's Fucked Up™

adding in at the last minute as i re-read this........... the use of the pet name "doll" feels very... well, what do you think of when you think of the words "russian" and "doll" in the same sentence? matryoshka dolls represent the cycle of life typically... eeee.... the cycle of life and death... see the tie back to sydney? and his 'death'? and rebirth? because you can stack and un-stack the dolls as much as you like? aghhhhhhhhhh!!!! am i overthinking this? probably. but the fact that you can even point out these little details in chnt just to me shows the level of effort put into the podcast in the first place

and lmao. 'wealthy family'. do all nepo babies in the chnt universe just choose to become little freaks? i mean, soren, jeddie to an extent, elijah...

("yeah i like shepherding sheep. but also the taste of their young.")

also too...

...assuming the salamander was actually elijah, which of course could just be a throwaway line to describe him, but also considering the vagueness in this whole spiel in which the main characters are presented as metaphorical or in a really vague and mystical sort of way... ???

(he likes collecting salamanders and also tearing their limbs off... see shepherding comparison above... hmmm...)

i also think its interesting that the agents are following the people classified as entities

hmmm... chthonic abilities being something traceable? something something fervour effect being the residual of this... idk...

also, dont even get me started on how elijahs (apparent) home province, arkhangelsk, literally translates to "archangel"... i guess if i were to get all poetic and pretentious about it, he's returning to... 'heaven'..? or he's descended from 'heaven' as an 'archangel' for syd or whatever... hmmm...

but idk. i just think its funny to imagine elijah on a plane. like this dirty blood stained weirdo freak in scrubs and a purple wizard cloak sitting at the window seat watching the clouds

#idk. hes such an interesting character to think about #im also gonna make a tag for these long rant rambling thingies i think #kfy stream of thoughts chnt super awesome cool tag #how sick is that?#chnt #camp here & there #camp here and there #ch&t #elijah volkov

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art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament · 9 months

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Stats 2: Electric Boogaloo

Our 256 works are comprised of.... 132 paintings, 36 drawings / digital artworks / comics, 26 installation pieces, 20 sculptures, 11 buildings, 11 public artworks, 10 photographs, 4 prints, 3 cave arts, 2 textile arts, and 1 thing I classified as a collage instead of anything else!

More stats below!

Most popular city: New York, with 13 pieces, followed by Paris with 8, and Chicago is third with 7! Washington DC has 6, Florence, Madrid, and London all have 5, Philadelphia has 4, Dublin, Edinburgh, Mexico City each have three, and all the following cities have two: Boston, Cairo, Calgary, Cordoba, Helsinki, Houston, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Munich, Ottawa, Prague, Vienna, Warsaw

Most popular museum: somehow the Art Institute of Chicago has the most with 6 pieces! Followed by the Museum of Modern Art with 5 pieces! The Museo del Prado has 4, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has 3, and the Ateneum, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museo Dolores Olmedo, National Gallery of Canada, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tate Britain, Tretyakov Gallery, and the Uffizi Gallery each have 2! In addition, the single works are spread out amongst 16 city level galleries (ie the Phoenix Art Museum), 5 state/provincial (ie Queensland Art Gallery), 25 national (ie National Gallery Prague), 8 museums named after benefactors (ie the Hirshhorn Museum), 7 museums dedicated to a specific artist (ie the Van Gogh Museum) and numerous other institutions! Churches, palaces, increasingly specific museums, museums that are named after their location rather than their governmental level... and of course a whole lot of private collections and pieces we were unable to find the location of!

Countries! 50 pieces are in the US! 13 in France! 12 in Spain! 7 in England, 6 in Canada and Italy, 5 in Russia, 4 in Ireland, Mexico, and Australia, 3 each in Germany, Austria, and Scotland, and 2 each in China, the Netherlands, Israel, Finland, Wales, Poland, Japan, Egypt, and India, and 1 each in Portugal, Ecuador, Thailand, Singapore, Belgium, Argentina, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Norway, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and the Vatican!

Demographics! I revoked John Singer Sargents American status for these because he was born in Europe, and spent most of his life travelling around Europe. I tried my best to track down the correct numbers but honestly some of these are likely to be slightly off. I went with easily publicly available information like Wikipedia and where that failed the author's website. I also tracked people's birth countries in addition to where they lived / worked for most of their lives. Anyway! We have 74 pieces by American artists! 27 French, 22 English, 14 Russian, 13 Spanish, 11 Canadian, 9 Italian, 8 Chinese, 8 German, 6 Irish, 6 Polish, 6 Mexican, 5 Greek (four of those are Ancient Greece), 5 Ukrainian, 5 Japanese, 4 Australian, 4 Belgian, 4 Indian, 3 Serbian, 3 Armenian, 3 Dutch, 3 Austria, 3 Latvian, 3 Swedish, 2 each from Finland, Scotland, Malaysia, Cuba, the Czech Republic, and Norway, and one each from Israel (specifically), Portugal, Ecuador, Thailand, Switzerland, Denmark, Iran, Colombia, Chile, Estonia, and Egypt (albeit Ancient Egypt)

Including the one Israeli artist, we have 7 Jewish artists represented, as well as 4 Black, 6 Indigenous (one is half Kichwa, one is Sami, one is Haida, one is Ojibwe, and two are Australian Aboriginals. One of those is Kokatha and Nukunu, and the other one was a group project with eight artists who did the majority of the work, and 6 of those are from Erub Island but the articles did not specify further except that at least one of the eight is non-Indigenous), 1 Chicana, and 1 Asian-American (which I am specifying because I felt very stupid adding tallies to an Asian column when I already said there are 8 Chinese artists and 5 Japanese and 2 Malaysians and....). We also do have 16 artists that publicly identify as queer in some fashion! I have listed 9 works by gay men, 2 works by lesbians, and 5 that have chosen to use "queer" instead of other labels.

And on that note.... we have 155 works by men, 51 by women, and 2 by nonbinary artists!

Most represented artists! Frida Kahlo and René Magritte tied with four works each! Félix González-Torres, Francisco Goya, John Singer Sargent each have three! And the artists that have 2 artworks each are... Claude Monet, Dragan Bibin, Edmund Blair Leighton, Francisco de Zurbarán, Gustav Klimt, Holly Warburton, Hugo Simberg, Ilya Repin, Ivan Aivazovsky, Jacques-Louis David, Jenny Holzer, Louis Wain, Pablo Picasso, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Victo Ngai, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Leonardo da Vinci (although the second is debated attribution)! That means that 205 of the works are not by any of the above! Some have unknown artists (we've got THREE CAVE ARTS) but most are just... really varied!

And lastly, years painted (as sorted by year finished and not year started). Who else loves when something is listed as "13th century"?? Not me, that's who. This is going to be a lot of numbers, and there's no real way to make it more readable. so..... feel free to skip!

The oldest two submissions are from circa 40,000 years before present, and 30 to 32 thousand years before present! Six more artworks came to exist before 0 (CE or AD depending on who you're talking to), and 7 before 1000! 2 from the 1200s, 6 from the 1400s, 8 from the 1500s, 3 from the 1600s, and 5 from the 1700s! Several of those already listed were started in a previous ....age category (for instance, one has no specified date other than 7300 BC to 700 AD) but once we hit 1600, everything is usually finished in a relatively short timespan. 6 are from 1800-1850, 9 from 1850-1880, and the 1880s are extremely busy. 1 from 1881, 3 from 1882, 1 from 1883-1885, 5 from 1886, and two each from the next four years (1887-1890)! 6 from 1891-1895, and 5 from 1896-1900!

We've got 3 from 1901 or 1902, 4 from 1903, two each from 1906 and 1907, and one each from 1908 and 1909! 3 from 1910-1915, 3 from 1917, 2 from 1918 and one from 1919! 6 are from the Roaring Twenties, three of them specifically from 1928! 4 from 1931-1935, and only 3 from the latter half of the 30s! There's 3 from WWII, and 4 from 1946-1949, 5 from 1951-1954 but only 3 from '55-'59. 5 from the sixties, 7 spread out through the 70s, and 10 from the 80s, two each from 81, 82 and 84. The 90s have a lot of duplicate and triplicate years, totaling 20 overall! 11 are from 90-95, the other 9 are 96-99. 7 from 2001-2005, and 8 from 2006-2009. 9 from 2010-2014, 3 from 2015, 6 from 2016, 5 from 2017, 1 from 2018, 3 from 2019, 5 from 2020, 1 from 2021, 4 from 2022, 11 from 2023, and 3 ongoing projects! Whew! If anyone wants it listed By Year instead of in groups like this, that'll be most readable in like... list form and that's way too long for a stats post.

Congrats on making it to the end! If you got this far, uh, let me know if you want to see the spreadsheet after the tournament, I guess. I'm very proud of it.

#art that fucks you up tournament #mod salix #stats for nerds

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soon-palestine · 3 months

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With @DanaBashCNN on @CNNSOTU

Nancy Pelosi suggests some of the activists calling for a ceasefire are "connected to Russia." Bash: You think some of these protests are Russian plants? Pelosi: Some financing should be investigated and I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.

the FBI is essentially not allowed to investigate Israeli espionage networks that have been proven over and over to operate freely in universities, businesses, and government facilities across the United States

“Dealing with the Israelis was, for those assigned that area, extremely frustrating. The Israelis were supremely confident that they had the clout, especially on the Hill, to basically get [away] with just about anything.”

“US intelligence officials trooped up to Capitol Hill to tell U.S. lawmakers considering visa waivers for Israelis that Jerusalem’s spying here had ‘crossed redlines’”

“‘The extent of the spying was ‘quite shocking,’ one staffer who was there told Stein, adding that he found the testimony ‘very sobering…alarming…even terrifying.’ Others called it ‘unrivaled’ and ‘unseemly,’ and noted that ‘it has been extensive for years.’”

“And a former staffer who attended a similar classified briefing exclaimed, ‘No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do.’”

source

#palestine #gaza #free palestine #permanent cease fire #end the starvation of gaza #end the active genocide

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actual-lea · 10 months

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TELL US ABOUT THE THERMONUCLEAR BOMBS LEA (& tag them appropriately please)

God okay I don't even know where to begin I just

I'm gonna ramble a lot about how these bombs work and none of it is going to be very informative probably unless you also want to check out the damn Thermonuclear Weapons wikipedia page at the same time, and even then it's fun to remember that all of this is mostly only how thermonuclear bombs are theorized to work, since the actual designs are obviously all super classified info

Also going to ramble specifically about how the bomb is presented in Lost, so spoilers also abound:

Okay well fun fact, a thermonuclear aka hydrogen aka fusion bomb (which is different than like. a "regular" atomic/nuclear/fission bomb) contains a regular atomic bomb inside it - there are two "stages" to a hydrogen bomb, of which the regular-ass atomic bomb is only the first (fission) stage and is basically only there in order to facilitate the secondary (fusion) stage, which is where most of the power actually comes from (and then from that there's more fission that happens, which might actually be where most of the power actually comes from? idk this is all top of my head I don't have the wiki article open right now lol)

That was something that really kind of blew my mind to learn. Like. The idea of an atomic bomb in most people's minds is (for good reason!) this huge city-flattening thing of indescribable destructive power, and that thing very quickly became irrelevant as anything but the activation for the actual bomb bomb, which is so so so many more times destructive than either of the bombs that were actually used in 1945.

I actually just recently re-skimmed over the wiki article about Tsar Bomba, the biggest EVER thermonuclear test explosion (which was in 1961 iirc, somewhere in Russia/the Soviet Union), which iirc is theorized by some people to have actually been a three-stage design rather than two-stage*, and fucking. The seismic wave created by this explosion circled the entire globe three fucking times over even though it was detonated in the fucking air

*because of the way that the two stages work, it's theoretically possible to just keep adding more and more of the "secondary" type device ad infinitum, but it becomes pretty impractical pretty quickly since (I think?) they'd need to keep getting bigger and with just a two stage weapon you're definitely already in like the 20 tons realm at minimum already, so it's kind of silly to keep adding more and more to it especially when the amount of explosive yield you're getting is already way more than enough than you could ever really need anyway

ANYWAY

None of that is really relevant to what I was ACTUALLY trying to learn about in the first place, which is like. How in the good goddamn the bomb in Lost is supposed to have worked.

(Really the thing I was trying to initially figure out more than anything is what the fuck would the stuff leaking from the casing of the bomb even have been and the jury's still out on that one tbh)

SO okay. Season 5 finale of Lost, we have Sayid and Jack and Eloise and Richard all going to get the bomb to do the thing with the incident. According to Sayid according to Daniel's journal, his plan was to remove the "plutonium core" of the bomb rather than trying to move the whole damn thing.

Incidentally, I have a copy of the Lost Encyclopedia, and like half the reason for buying it in the first place was because I saw online that there were more pictures of Dan's journal/the disassembly instructions for the bomb in it (which I did get this damn thing in like November 2020 so that should tell you how long I've been looking into this stuff lmao)

(a picture of a spread from the Lost Encyclopedia showing several images of pages from Daniel's journal)

So, okay - there are 2 spreads (4 pages) worth of detailed disassembly instructions, over on the right side of the image - idk if any of that is even readable in the image but to summarize: the first pages (bottom right) are the ones we actually see for like half a second in the episode:

(an image from 5x16 of Sayid's hands holding Daniel's journal open to those same disassembly instructions)

According to these instructions, what we are actually removing in the episode and carrying around and dropping in the Swan hole, is the "plutonium primary device from the secondary payload", which. Is not really a thing? The "primary" device in a hydrogen bomb IS the atomic bomb, which is a whole separate thing from the "secondary" device. There is a plutonium "spark plug" cylinder inside the secondary, which I assume is probably what this would be referring to, HOWEVER the second part of the instructions (top right of the Encyclopedia image above) have a drawing of this device, which apparently includes "slow explosive lense", which is absolutely not a thing that would be in the secondary. The explosive lenses in a hydrogen bomb would only be found around the primary, most likely in a spherical shape that creates a series of synchronized explosions to compress a spherical plutonium (or perhaps enriched uranium, but most likely plutonium) "pit" in the center, squeezing it enough to cause it to go supercritical which is what causes the explosion. Then, the heat/radiation caused by this explosion is enough to (in a matter of like microseconds - this is also why the inside of the casing is made specifically to hold together long enough for the reaction to actually happen, because otherwise the explosion would blow everything apart before it reached its full potential yield or whatever) then compress the secondary device, a cylindrical casing (called a tamper) most probably made of un-enriched/depleted uranium (I think? it wouldn't be dangerously radioactive to the touch, which is why Sayid handling the damn thing with only a pair of gloves in the episode is actually probably plenty of precaution) with a rod of plutonium inside it and also some tritium/deuterium (isotopes of hydrogen, which is the "hydrogen" part of the hydrogen bomb) is there.

So basically, the radiation/heat/neutrons of the first explosion of the primary compress/ablate the casing of the secondary, and the neutrons react with the tritium and deuterium from the outside while the neutrons from the fission reaction of the plutonium "spark plug" that's getting compressed inside the secondary react with the tritium and deuterium from the inside, and all of this causes a bunch of fusion reactions, which also release MORE neutrons, which then cause some more fission of the uranium casing that surrounds the whole enchilada, and this is how big big big explosion happen.

All that to say - there aren't any explosives present in the secondary. Taking out the "plutonium core" wouldn't leave you with a detonate-able bomb, it would just leave you with a chunk of plutonium and no way to compress it into supercriticality.

Even so, it does seem like the writers did a non-zero amount of research, because I kind of see what we did here? Basically fudged the primary and secondary together in order to make it so that we can take just a piece of the bomb and still have it be detonate-able. So, we've invented for the convenience of the plot a plutonium core that is surrounded by explosives (in a cylindrical shape, which probably wouldn't really work but the plot demands that it does), which is in essence...just an atomic bomb. Not "in itself a thermonuclear weapon" like Sayid says, but definitely enough to cause a big boom**, which I guess is the goal here. I would presume that the actual cylinder (picture below) itself is meant to be a (depleted) uranium casing, with explosive lenses inside it (that the wires are connected to) encasing the cylinder of plutonium inside.

(an image from the Lost Encyclopedia of the "Jughead Bomb" entry, which includes a close-up of the cylindrical device that Jack drops into the Swan hole in 5x17)

**Incidentally, one of the pages in the first Encyclopedia image above mentions "four kilotons" as the theoretical yield of the plutonium core, which I guess might maybe be accurate if we're just treating this thing like a regular ass atomic bomb at this point? It's clearly a very small amount of plutonium that we're working with - for reference, the "Fat Man" atomic bomb (the Nagasaki one) apparently had 6.19 kg of plutonium in it, which is a little over 13 and a half pounds, and of that only about 1 kg actually fissioned, giving a yield of somewhere between 19-23 kilotons. If we're working with...idk, maybe half a kg of plutonium? A little over a pound? And only 1/6 of it was to actually fission upon detonation, then yeah, that yield could probably get pretty close to 4 kilotons.

Even so even so, the idea of rigging the bomb to detonate on impact would maybe maybe work, but only if there was a way to guarantee that the impact would cause the "explosive lenses" (that we're gonna pretend are there) to explode, in sync. This is something that's ordinarily accomplished by an electrical signal sent simultaneously to all of the outer shell of explosives at once - judging from the wires that are all along the cylinder thing, I would presume that's what we're going with in the episode as well. The notes on the second part of the instructions mention "spring loaded detonation switches" but I don't really know what the fuck that means. My best guess is that it's set up like a Wile E Coyote TNT handle switch thing - mayhaps there's a spring loaded thing at the top of the cylinder (right side of the image above, where the tape is) that completes the circuit either when squeezed down or when un-squeezed (I'm leaning towards that, given the tape?) and that's how it would perhaps be able to explode on impact, if that knocked the thing loose enough to complete the circuit.

In which case, hitting it with a rock on the side of the thing would definitely not do anything.

My way to make it make more sense (perhaps in a future fanfic, who can say) would be if rather than there being any kind of explosives in the device itself, if it's instead the pressure/heat generated by the electromagnetic field of the Swan's "electromagnetic pocket" that somehow compresses the device, to the point that the plutonium inside can reach supercriticality and go boom.

But of course, that's not as dramatic or exciting as hitting it with a rock eight times.

Incidentally incidentally, shooting the thing with a gun would also not make it explode (much in the same way that shooting a gas can with a gun would not cause an explosion), but damaging the wires in any way that would cause a short or anything like that could render it unable to detonate and/or cause an explosion that just sort of spits out plutonium chunks everywhere (dirty bomb), so you still don't really want to bring it into the middle of a gunfight if you can help it JACK

#oh this is so many words for so little information #i can't arrange it in a coherent way really but know that it all lives in my head nonstop #ask lea #anonymous #i don't even know how to begin to tag this appropriately #radiation ??#bombs ???#nuclear stuff ????#long post

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Legal experts said new revelations about obstruction evidence collected by special counsel Jack Smith's team could land former President Donald Trump in deep legal trouble.

Smith's team has obtained evidence that Trump personally rummaged through boxes of secret government documents he took home to Mar-a-Lago and has been "asking witnesses if Trump showed classified documents, including maps, to political donors," The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal told MSNBC that the evidence could be "devastating" for Trump's defense.

youtube

"It ties Trump directly to the scheme," he said. "If it holds up and, of course, we don't know — and Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence and all that, but if that's what [special counsel] Jack Smith is looking at and looks like what he got, that's going to be very devastating."

Former senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok highlighted the focus on donors.

"If you're trying to figure out the 'why,' what's your theory of the case, why on Earth did he want to do it, if he's using this to convert it for fundraising and showing it to people who absolutely have no business seeing it and he's hiding it at the same time," he said. "That really starts to flesh out the story about, one, why this occurred and, two, how integral Trump was to this entire enterprise."

Trump claimed that he had the "right" to take home documents in a recent Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, who repeatedly tried to help the former president without success.

"I've known you for decades," Hannity said. "I can't imagine you ever saying, 'Bring me some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House. I'd like to look at them.' Did you ever do that?"

"I would have the right to do that," Trump responded. "There's nothing wrong with it."

"But I know you," Hannity said. "I don't think you would do it."

"I don't have a lot of time, but I would have the right to do that," Trump retorted. "I would do that."

"Remember this," Trump added. "This is the Presidential Records Act. I have the right to take stuff."

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough mocked Trump's "confession" video on Tuesday.

"Sean was trying to help Trump time and again," Scarborough said, but Trump "goes on and proves the federal government's case."

youtube

A few friendly reminders...

• Saudi Arabia gave Jared Kushner TWO BILLION DOLLARS.

• Russian oligarchs have already been arrested for donating money to Donald Trump’s Super PAC.

• GOP staffers have been caught funneling Russian money into Trump’s 2016 POTUS campaign.

• Russia has financed Trump Media.

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ukrainenews · 1 year

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Daily Wrap Up April 6-11, 2023

I took a little vacation, and it’s really hard to post these from a phone!

Under the cut:

Ukrainian forces are working to strengthen defensive lines and positions along the border with Belarus and Russia, the defence ministry has said.

The Pentagon is investigating a security breach in which classified war documents detailing secret American and Nato plans for supplying aid to Ukraine before its prospective offensive against Russia were leaked to social media platforms.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has pledged fresh military support for Ukraine after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Denys Shmyhal. Canada will send 21,000 assault rifles, 38 machine guns and 2.4m rounds of ammunition to Ukraine and impose sanctions on 14 Russian individuals and 34 entities, including security targets linked to the private mercenary Wagner group, Trudeau said.

Wagner founder and financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on Tuesday that Russian forces now control much of the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Ukrainian officials have denied Prigozhin’s claim.

No ships were inspected on Tuesday under the Ukraine Black Sea grain deal "as the parties needed more time to reach an agreement on operational priorities," the United Nations said, adding that routine inspections were due to resume on Wednesday.

The German government reported transferring a new military aid package to Ukraine, which includes eight reconnaissance drones, another 23,520 rounds of 40-mm ammunition, and eight mobile antenna systems. Germany has also delivered eight more Zetros trucks for extreme off-road conditions bringing the total amount to 60, according to the report.

Ukrainian forces are working to strengthen defensive lines and positions along the border with Belarus and Russia, the defence ministry has said.

The ministry, citing Lt Gen Serhiy Nayev, commander of the joint forces of Ukraine’s armed forces, posted to Facebook:

The expansion of the system of engineering barriers in the areas bordering Belarus and Russia is ongoing. Anti-tank minefields are being created in tank accessible areas and probable paths of pushing the enemy deep into our territory which are roads, forest lanes, bridges, power lines, etc.

Nayev added that Ukrainian engineering units have equipped several dozens of mine fields using more than 6,000 anti-tank mines in the past week. Ukrainian soldiers were working “around the clock, despite the weather conditions”, he said.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, met with his Belarusian counterpart and close ally, Alexander Lukashenko, for talks in Moscow on Wednesday. Moscow is Minsk’s closest political and financial backer.

Lukashenko allowed Putin to use the territory of Belarus as a launch pad for the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Last month, Putin announced that Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

-via The Guardian

The top secret documents were spread on Twitter and Telegram, and reportedly contain charts and details about anticipated weapons deliveries, battalion strengths and other sensitive information, the New York Times reported. According to military analysts, the papers appear to have been altered in certain parts from their original format, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed, citing how the modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow.

“We are aware of the reports of social media posts and the department is reviewing the matter,” said Sabrina Singh, the deputy press secretary at the Pentagon, as officials worked to have them deleted.

The NYT said the documents, which are five weeks old, with at least one carrying a “top secret” label, do not contain details of when, how, or where Ukraine intends to launch its counteroffensive.

According to analysts, however, the leak represents a “significant breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine”.

One of the documents, which circulated on pro-Russian government channels, summarised the training schedules of 12 Ukrainian combat brigades, and said nine of them were being trained by US and Nato forces, and needed 250 tanks and more than 350 mechanised vehicles, the newspaper said.

The classified papers also contain details on expenditure rates for munitions under Ukrainian military control, including for the Himars rocket systems, the US-made artillery rocket systems that have proved highly effective against Russian forces.

According to Ukrainian presidential official Mykhailo Podolyak, the leak was part of a Russian disinformation operation to sow doubts about Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Podolyak told Reuters that the leaked data contained a “very large amount of fictitious information” and that Russia was trying to seize back the initiative in its invasion. “These are just standard elements of operational games by Russian intelligence, and nothing more,” Podolyak said. “Russia is looking for any ways to seize back the initiative. To try to influence the scenarios for Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans. To introduce doubts, to compromise the … ideas, and finally to intimidate [us] with how ‘informed’ they are.”

Nonetheless, Ukraine’s leaders met to discuss ways to prevent to prevent leaks of their defence plans, the president’s office announced on Friday.

In a separate development on Friday, Russia appeared to have made important gains in Bakhmut, one of the bloodiest battles of the year-long war, with outgunned Ukrainian troops holding out despite Moscow’s numerical superiority.

The UK Ministry of Defence said in its daily update that Russian forces had “highly likely advanced into the [Bakhmut] town centre, and has seized the west bank of the Bakhmutka River. Ukraine’s key supply route to the west of the town is likely severely threatened.”

It added: “There is a realistic possibility that, locally, Wagner and Russian MoD commanders have paused their ongoing feud and improved cooperation.”

The battle for Bakhmut has raged for seven months, with thousands of people killed and hundreds of buildings collapsed or charred. The few remaining civilians have been confined to basements for months with no running water, electricity or gas.

In spite of the rumours earlier this year of a retreat of his troops from the area, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he had instructed the army to find forces to bolster the defence of the embattled city.

The eastern military command spokesperson Serhiy Cherevatyi told Reuters that Ukraine controlled the situation in Bakhmut, understood Russian intentions and that Moscow had tactical success in some places, but was paying a high price for it.

“The situation is difficult; the enemy is concentrating maximum efforts to capture Bakhmut. However, it is suffering serious losses and not reaching strategic success,” Cherevatyi said.

“All decisions are taken with the aim of not allowing the enemy to break through our defence, to inflict maximum damage to it and preserve personnel. Having tactical success in some places, the enemy pays an exorbitant price for it and loses combat potential every day.”

-via The Guardian

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has pledged fresh military support for Ukraine after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Denys Shmyhal.

Canada will send 21,000 assault rifles, 38 machine guns and 2.4m rounds of ammunition to Ukraine and impose sanctions on 14 Russian individuals and 34 entities, including security targets linked to the private mercenary Wagner group, Trudeau said.

The Canadian government is also imposing sanctions on nine entities tied to the Belarusian financial sector to further pressure Russia’s “enablers in Belarus,” Trudeau said.

-via The Guardian

Wagner founder and financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on Tuesday that Russian forces now control much of the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

“We are fully concentrated on Bakhmut, continuing to carry out combat missions. In Bakhmut, most of it — that is, more than 80% — is under our control, including the entire administrative center, plants, factories, the city administration,” Prigozhin said. “What is left is part of the multi-story residential areas, where fortification districts were made. There are tunnels under these high-rise buildings.”

Ukrainian officials have denied Prigozhin’s claim.

"This statement by Prigozhin is not true,” Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the eastern grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces told CNN on Tuesday. “I've just been in touch with the commander of one of the brigades that are defending the city. I can confidently state that the Ukrainian defense forces control a much larger percentage of the territory of Bakhmut." "Prigozhin needs to show at least some victory in the city, which they have been trying to capture for nine months in a row, so he makes such statements," Cherevatyi added.

The Wagner founder has been known to make incorrect claims about his forces’ advance on the ground in Ukraine. Last week, he posted a grainy video raising a flag at dawn, saying Bakhmut had "been taken," despite ongoing fighting in and around the city. His claim was seen as a "pretty desperate" attempt, Western officials said.

What Western officials are saying: The officials conceded Russia had been able to make some progress in Bakhmut, but added it could be "measured in meters."

"The Russians at the moment, despite trying for six months, with huge numbers of personnel and huge numbers of losses, have been unable to take the town, and at the moment have made very, very slow progress,” the officials said at a briefing last Wednesday.

In the video this Tuesday, Prigozhin said Wagner fighters had relinquished control of some areas around Bakhmut to the Russian military.

“We handed over the flanks to the Ministry of Defence. Units of the Ministry of Defence, including the airborne troops, have today taken over both the right and left flanks,” he said. “That is why Zaliznyanskoye, Nikolaevka, and other settlements, which were stormed by units of the Wagner PMC in previous months, are in the area of responsibility of the airborne troops and other units of the Ministry of Defence.”

-via CNN

"We urge all involved to meet their responsibilities to ensure that vessels continue to move smoothly and safely in the interest of global food security," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement, adding that there are currently 50 vessels waiting to move to the Ukrainian ports.

All ships are inspected by officials from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations in waters near Turkey on the way in and out of Ukraine. Official online data shows no ships were inspected on Tuesday.

Since the deal allowing the safe wartime export of grain from Ukraine's Black Sea ports was agreed in July, more then 27.5 million tonnes of food have been exported. Dujarric said this had contributed to the lowering of food prices globally.

"This critical work is done against the backdrop of the ongoing war and active hostilities. We do not underestimate the challenges, but we know they can be overcome," he said. "The U.N. team is working closely with all sides, taking into consideration all parties' concerns."

The deal - initially brokered last July by Turkey and the United Nations - was renewed last month for at least 60 days, half the intended period.

"The global humanitarian benefits of the initiative are evident and are not limited to exports to specific low-income countries. It is in everyone's interest to keep it going," Dujarric said.

Russia has said it will only extend the deal beyond May 18 if impediments to its export of agricultural products and fertilizer are removed. Moscow's demands include returning the Russian Agricultural Bank to the SWIFT banking system and unblocking the financial activities of fertilizer companies.

To help persuade Russia to allow Ukraine to resume its Black Sea grain exports last year, a three-year deal was also struck in July in which the United Nations agreed to help Russia with its food and fertilizer exports.

Western powers have imposed tough sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While its food and fertilizer exports are not sanctioned, Moscow says restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance industries are a barrier to shipments.

-via Reuters

Germany has also delivered eight more Zetros trucks for extreme off-road conditions bringing the total amount to 60, according to the report.

Kyiv has also received four armored engineer vehicles DACHS, including the one Berlin delivered over the past week, the government wrote in its weekly update.

From Jan. 1, 2022, to April 3, 2023, Germany provided Ukraine with more than 2.7 billion euros ($2.9 billion) in military aid, according to the German government.

On March 29, Germany approved additional military aid for Ukraine worth 12 billion euros, consisting of 3.2 billion euros that will be distributed in 2023, as well as credit lines worth 8.8 billion euros that will be allocated between 2024 and 2032.

Berlin has also taken the lead in what has been dubbed the "tank coalition" to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons for combat on the battlefield.

-via Kyiv Independent

#Daily Update #Ukraine #Russia #War in Ukraine #Germany #US #Canada #Bakhmut #Black Sea #Belarus

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svetads · 2 years

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Russia Classified Ads- Increasing Traffic & Sales!

Russia Classified Ads! Classified ads are an effective advertising technique. It aimed at increasing sales and attracting new customers via the Internet. Post your ad here svetads.com

#Russia Classified Ads #classifieds #classified ads #ads #russia #russian

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beardedmrbean · 1 year

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Russia’s hypersonic missiles have taken a dual hit this week from Patriots fired by Ukraine and “patriots” arrested at home.

Once touted as unstoppable, the program now faces growing domestic fallout from treason charges against three scientists who worked on the technology, just as Kyiv claims its U.S.-supplied air defense systems have been able to shoot many of the missiles down.

The Kremlin said Wednesday that the scientists face “very serious accusations” after a rare public outcry over a wartime crackdown that has fueled a growing sense of unease across Russian society.

In an open letter published Monday criticizing the arrests, colleagues of the three academics in hypersonic technology warned that Russia’s research on the subject faces “impending collapse.”

The three scientists — Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk and Valery Zvegintsev — were employees of the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. They were all detained on suspicion of high treason over the past year, according to the letter published on the institute’s website.

The letter professes the men’s innocence and praises their academic achievements, adding that all three chose to stay in Russia over highly paid and prestigious work abroad.

“We know each of them as a patriot and a decent person who is not capable of doing what the investigating authorities suspect them of,” it said.

It’s rare and risky in modern Russia to speak out in defense of people charged with treason, especially after a bill was adopted last month increasing the maximum sentence for the crime to life in jail.

The Russian state media agency Tass reported on the arrests of Maslov and Shiplyuk last summer, and Zvegintsev earlier this week. It said Zvegintsev was detained about three weeks ago, and is under house arrest. NBC News could not verify these details.

Shiplyuk was in charge of the laboratory of hypersonic technologies at the institute, which has “unique hypersonic aerodynamic installations designed to study the fundamental and applied problems of hypersonic flight,” according to his bio on the website. Maslov is a renowned expert in the field of aerogasdynamics, it said.

The institute released an open letter in support of Maslov after his arrest last June for what it said was “high treason,” saying that his colleagues were “shocked” by his detention. It was also fundraising on behalf of the families of Maslov and Shiplyuk to cover their legal expenses.

Tass reported earlier this week that the materials in Maslov’s case are classified and have been handed over to a judge in a St. Petersburg court. The agency said Maslov’s case was investigated by the FSB, Russia’s secret service.

While the details of their cases have not been made public, the open letter by their colleagues said the three men could have been arrested for simply doing their jobs, including making presentations at global conferences and taking part in international scientific projects. Their work was also repeatedly checked by the institute’s expert commission to ensure it doesn’t contain “restricted information,” the letter said.

“In this situation, we are not only afraid for the fate of our colleagues. We just do not understand how to continue to do our job,” it added, raising concerns about “a rapid decline in the level of research” if employees are too afraid to do their work.

Such cases are dissuading young Russian scientists from staying in the field, the letter said, and could bring Russian science to a brink it last faced after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which saw a massive brain drain from the country. “Domestic science may not endure the second such blow,” the letter added.

The letter also mentioned the controversial case of another Russian scientist, Dmitry Kolker, who was arrested last year on suspicion of treason despite suffering from an advanced form of cancer. He was flown to Moscow for detention and died several days later.

The Kremlin said it was aware of the letter in defense of the academics, but spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a matter for Russian special services, the state media agency Ria reported. “This is a very serious accusation,” he said, according to the agency.

But the scientists are not the only patriots seemingly bedeviling the Kremlin.

The letter comes as a wave of the hypersonic missiles — which Russian President Vladimir Putin once boasted were all but unstoppable — were seemingly shot down by Ukraine this week.

Kyiv claimed Tuesday that it had shot down six Russian Kinzhal missiles in a single night, a statement disputed by Moscow.

The air-launched ballistic missiles were considered next-generation technology by Russia and were praised by Puitn in a highly publicized speech in early 2018, where he said that they are “invulnerable” to existing missile and air defense systems, which “simply cannot catch up with them.”

The apparent vulnerability of these missiles “is likely a surprise and an embarrassment for Russia,” the British Defense Ministry said in its daily dispatch Wednesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said one of its Kinzhal missiles had “struck and completely destroyed” a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air missile defense system in Kyiv on Tuesday, citing what it called “reliable data.” But two U.S. officials confirmed that the Patriot battery had incurred some damage but was still operational.

#nunyas news

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mariacallous · 2 months

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In Russia, you don’t have to look too hard to find “tough guys” offering to help you deal with sensitive issues, whether they be business-related or personal. These men, referred to as “fixers,” are considered to have reached their heyday in the 1990s — but they continue to offer their services in dealings between business partners, embittered exes, or even in matters involving the state. Olesia Ostapchuk, a special correspondent for independent media outlet Holod, dove into the world of Russia’s “fixers,” learning more about their main clients, their work both inside and outside the bounds of the law, and how their profession has changed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Meduza in English is publishing an abridged translation.

‘Apply a little pressure’

It’s unlikely that anyone who knows 33-year-old Marcel Gasanov was surprised when, in October 2023, police caught him outside of Kaspiy, a notorious cafe known to be a hub for crime bosses in the city of Yekaterinburg. This wasn’t the first time Gasanov had been involved in local criminal affairs: he’d previously served a stint in prison for robbery and received a suspended sentence for possession of firearms. Now, Gasanov works as a “fixer,” according to local media reports.

“Fixers,” as they’re commonly referred to, are hired to resolve a wide variety of issues for which a client either can’t, or doesn’t want to, contact the police or state authorities. While requests most often entail debt collection, they can range from “problems with unruly neighbors, troublesome employees, and unreasonable relatives” to helping those who have been “scammed out of large sums of money by their ‘loved ones’” and even getting people out of cults. “I do the work that others won’t take on,” says one fixer from Vladivostok.

According to Yekaterinburg outlet E1.ru, Marsel Gasanov “doesn’t even wear a mask” when he’s on assignment — he knows he has the support of the authorities. Tellingly, he didn’t face any criminal charges for the incident at Kaspiy or for his involvement in another conflict between rival management companies in February 2022.

Fixers’ services are often publicized on Avito, Russia’s most popular classified ads website. Though Dmitry Krylov’s (name changed) listings on Avito don’t explicitly mention his profession, he offers to “resolve any unusual issues,” “restore justice” and “get back your child, finances, or property.” “We can do anything for money, and for good money, absolutely anything!” reads one ad.

Recently, a worker at an auto repair shop told Krylov about an individual who owes him money, and asked him to “apply a little pressure, you know, give a bit of a nudge.” Krylov receives all sorts of offers — once, a teenager even asked him to “deal with” one of his teachers who had “said too much” to his parents, prompting Krylov to clarify that he doesn’t commit murder.

“We try to do everything within the bounds of the law,” Krylov explains. “Though there are, of course, some exceptional circumstances.”

‘Fixers used to be gangsters, now they’re more likely to be officials in uniform’

In Russia, “fixers” refer to a wide range of individuals — well-connected scammers who have influence over lawmakers, lawyers who can be bribed into ensuring a desired outcome in a criminal case, and those willing to have tough conversations with noisy neighbors.

One researcher says fixers fall into the two following categories: those in the criminal world who collect debts and help squeeze out competitors, or middlemen who know the right people in government and can achieve results faster or without the red tape. The first category is extrajudicial, while the other takes advantage of the law.

“In my understanding, the most important ‘fixers’ are corrupt middlemen who take bribes,” explains one of Holod’s sources. “They’re usually former employees from the police force, law enforcement, the prosecutor’s office, or agencies addressing economic crimes.” “Fixers used to be those gangsters from the 1990s,” the source adds. “Now they’re more likely to be officials in uniform.”

Some fixers lobby for semi-legal or illegal businesses that produce bootleg alcohol, sell counterfeits, provide sex services, or run underground casinos. “They need a person who has influence, so that [the authorities] won’t touch [their] interests, or when they do, it’s coordinated,” explains one insider.

But there’s another group of fixers — those willing to get involved in even the smallest assignments such as “punishing” an unfaithful husband. “It all depends on the amount of money offered,” said one source. “[They will engage in] all kinds of petty crime: torching a car, beating someone up.”

Asked if fixers face punishment or prosecution, one of Holod’s sources said they’re “only jailed when they step out of line.” “Or if they go too far. For example, [if] the person they beat up ends up dying. Or they set fire to a car, and it’s outside the mayor’s house.”

‘Even the state occasionally turns to us’

Andrey Petrov (name changed), a fixer, says people usually come to him for problems related to debts and fraud. But he “carries out delicate assignments” all around the globe — helping locate people, accompanying and transporting cargo. “We have employees in China, in Vietnam,” he says. “There are some who work in Europe, although it’s difficult now.” Petrov says that he’s often enlisted to help people look for someone, given that so many people have now left Russia. “Even the state itself sometimes turns to us instead of to the police,” he adds.

When it comes to requests involving violence, not all fixers abide by the same principles, says Dmitry Krylov. “There are shadier guys who will come and do it.” “They’ll set apartments or cars on fire for 5,000-10,000 rubles ($54-$110),” Krylov explains. “Someone gets cut off while driving, they remember the license plate, and they have the cash. And they’ll say ‘We’ll find out where it’s parked, it needs to be torched. We have the money.’”

These types of fixers aren’t usually found through Avito but via word of mouth. One of Holod’s intermediaries inquired whether any of these “shadier” fixers were willing to speak with journalists. In response, these fixers promised to “smash their faces in.”

‘Requests have become increasingly violent’

After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, fixers started receiving new types of requests, says Petrov: “Those who left during mobilization want to know if they’re being pursued [by law enforcement agencies], and how they can return without getting in trouble.”

Active-duty military personnel also contact fixers. “Mainly to check on their wives while they’re away,” explains Petrov. “Imagine, a person is at war for a year and they don’t know what’s going on at home.”

In the two years since the start of the war, fixer Dmitry Krylov says the requests he receives have become increasingly violent. Before, most clients would contact him for debt collection. Now, he says, they ask him to “beat someone up or break their legs.”

“People have less trust in the authorities,” Krylov continues, reflecting on how the work of fixers has changed. “Now, they’re more likely to believe that some sensible guys will be better able to solve things than the police. God forbid it turns into a situation where thugs are more trusted than the authorities. Although it seems like that’s the direction we’re headed.”

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chocolateandsilver · 1 year

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The Restrict Act 2023

About the Restrict Act

There’s a lot of information/misinformation I’ve been seeing about the Restrict Act. I’ve stared at the damn bill for around thirty hours at this point, so I thought I’d give people a summary of what it’s actually doing as well as what it isn’t doing, to help you avoid misinformation.

Buckle in, folks, because this is going to be a long post. I know Tumblr is allergic to nuance, but hopefully you’ll be able to see both the good and the bad in this bill by the time I’m done, and be able to understand what’s actually going on. If you just want to see problems with the act, the last section is devoted to that.

tl;dr good in spirit because of the rising rate of infrastructure cyberattacks, but the letter of the law could use a little work to make sure that the government can't overstep

Why the Restrict Act?

Let’s start with the why. Why does the US government feel like this Act is necessary? The stated purpose is: “To authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes.” Which is a bunch of legalese, so I’ll give you some examples of things that are happening in the real world which the government wants more authority to look into.

The author of the bill, Sen. Warner, specifically cited Huawei and Kapersky as companies that were doing Suspicious Things, so we’ll look at those first.

Huawei: Huawei is a telecommunications company. The US, Australia, Canada, Sweden, UK, Lithuania, and Estonia have all taken various actions against Huawei over the last decade or so. In 2012, a malicious software update was installed on Huawei devices in Australia, attacking Australia’s telecommunications network. In 2021, a Washington Post review suggested that Huawei was involved in mass surveillance programs. In 2014, a Huawei engineer was caught hacking a cell phone tower in India

Kapersky: The UK, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the EU, Germany, and Italy have all taken action against Kapersky. This company produces antivirus software, and was accused of working on secret projects with Russia’s Federal Security Service, especially in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Allegedly, the company used the popular antivirus software to secretly scan for classified documents and other information, and allegedly stole NSA information.

In addition to these two companies, there have been tons of cyberattacks worldwide.

Half of the United States’ fuel supply was compromised due to a hack on Colonial Pipeline, shutting down fuel for some areas in the American southeast for days

A hacking group disrupted Iranian steel factories and even started a fire

Costa Rica had to declare a national emergency after government systems were hit, including systems for exports, pensions, taxes, welfare, and even Covid-19 testing.

A ransomware attack caused a major outage to emergency health services in the UK

The stated purpose of this act is to give the USA some kind of formal process to make decisions when something like this is suspected of happening, and when it’s caused by a “foreign adversary.”

What’s a foreign adversary?

A foreign adversary is a country that has engaged in a “long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or security and safety of United States persons.”

The bill kindly provides us with a list of six countries that fit this description: China(including Hong Kong), Cuba, Iran, Korea, Russia, and Venezuela

The Secretary of Commerce can add/remove countries to this list at any time, as long as Congress is informed within 15 days of the reasoning behind that decision.

Once Congress is informed, Congress can disagree via joint resolution (So both Houses have to vote to disagree with the Secretary of Commerce’s decision). If Congress disagrees, there’s a whole complicated process for getting the label added/removed.

We’ll get into the ethics later, in the Genuine Problems section.

For the rest of this post, I’ll be saying Scary Countries instead of foreign adversaries, so that it’s easier for people to understand.

What is the United States allowed to investigate using this Act?

So first we’re going to define some things, because the Act is very specific about what the United States can investigate.

The bill defines something called a “covered transaction,” which is basically a financial or technological action taken by a Scary Country or on behalf of a Scary Country. For the rest of this post, I’ll be saying Scary Action instead of covered transaction.

The bill also defines something called a “covered holding,” which is essentially any group that is partially or fully owned by a Scary Country, on behalf of a Scary Country, or that falls under a Scary Country’s jurisdiction, even with degrees of separation. The group has to affect either 1+ million Americans or has to have sold 1+ million units of a tech product to Americans. This group is usually a company, but it can be other things, too. For the rest of this post, I’ll be saying Scary & Important Group instead of covered holding.

The Secretary of Commerce is allowed to find/investigate/stop any Scary Action or Scary & Important Group that wants to do one of the following:

sabotage information and communications tech in the US

damage critical infrastructure or the digital economy of the US

interfere with a Federal election

undermine democratic processes

Pose any other unacceptable risk to the USA.

This is a list of Really Bad Things, so from now on I’m going to call it the List of Really Bad Things.

If it’s a Scary & Important Group instead of a Scary Action, the Secretary will refer the information to the President, who will then decide what to do to stop the threat. Otherwise, if it’s just a Scary Action, the Secretary has the authority to stop it.

If the Secretary finds out that something Scary is going on and that it falls under the List of Really Bad Things, the Secretary is REQUIRED to publish information in a DECLASSIFIED form about why they thought there was a threat and what was done to stop it, as long as none of the information is already classified. (This is a good thing!)

Process

First, the Secretary is given authority to find and investigate Scary Actions and Scary & Important Groups. The Secretary is also allowed to delegate this to Federal officials. Something key here is that the bill says that Federal officials can only have investigative powers that are “conferred upon them by any other Federal law.” They don’t get any extra powers. Anyone who tells you otherwise is panicking too hard to properly read the bill.

So what happens if, in the course of investigation, the Secretary finds out that a Scary Action or Scary & Important Group is trying to do a Really Bad Thing? Simple. The Attorney General will bring the case to an “appropriate district court.” The max fine for a civil penalty for an individual here is $250,000. For a criminal penalty for an individual, the max fine is $1 million and/or 20 years in prison, as well as giving up any of the things they used to do Really Bad Stuff with.

If someone is found guilty, they can appeal that decision, but only to the District of Columbia Circuit. Note that this is only for appeals! Otherwise, everything will be through the normal federal district courts.

If the appeal fails, too, the US will file all of the information that they used to make any big decisions with the court, and will give the defendant all of the information that is not classified, so that the defendant can ask for a full review.

Once the United States has stopped a Scary Action or a Scary & Important Group from doing Really Bad Things, it’s illegal to go around/against any of the actions that US has taken to do that.

Specifically, the bill says that “no person may cause or aid, abet, counsel, command, induce, procure, permit, or approve the doing of any act prohibited by, or the omission of any act required by any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under, this Act.”

Yes, this is legitimately scary. We’ll get into the ethics later, in the Genuine Problems section.

Myths

The bill gives the USA power to ban VPNs!

No. Unless the VPN company is trying to do one of the Really Bad Things under the instruction of a Scary Country or is suspected of doing one of the Really Bad Things, the VPN company will be fine.

The bill gives the USA power to investigate way more than they could before!

No. “In conducting investigations described in paragraph (1), designated officers or employees of Federal agencies described that paragraph may, to the extent necessary or appropriate to enforce this Act, exercise such authority as is conferred upon them by any other Federal law, subject to policies and procedures approved by the Attorney General” (emphasis mine).

Important here is “exercise such authority as is conferred upon them by any other Federal law” — this act is not giving them additional leeway. Really, the USA is making use of the lack of privacy that’s already baked into law in order to investigate.

If TikTok is banned and I use a VPN to access it, I could go to jail for 20 years!

Possible but severely unlikely, at least according to this law. Let’s go through some scenarios:

Scenario 1: The USA takes TikTok to court. In the decision, the USA says the TikTok app is no longer allowed to be on any app store. In this case, using a VPN to access TikTok would still be allowed, since the ban is for TikTok’s actions, not US citizens’ actions.

Scenario 2: The USA takes TikTok to court. In the decision, the USA says that TikTok is required to have some kind of filter banning US IP addresses. In this case, using a VPN to access TikTok would still be allowed, since the ban is for TikTok’s actions, not US citizens’ actions.

Scenario 3: The USA enacts a law forbidding citizens from accessing TikTok. This is unlikely, since the USA would have to have an entirely separate non-court procedure to do this, which is only kind of in the scope of the law. I guess it’s possible, but it’s skating on thin ice. In this case, using a VPN to access TikTok would be a crime. 4. If you’re charged, you have to go to the DC Circuit Court and not any of the other courts!

Actually, you’d first be charged under an ordinary district court in your state. If you decide to appeal, however, then you have to appeal to DC.

Genuine Problems

Adding a Scary Country to the list seems really easy. There’s nothing to stop the government from adding every single country to the list and then investigating every single action. Granted, it’s highly unlikely that this would happen, simply because then the amount of information would be difficult to go through, but it’s possible.

In the list of Really Bad Things, there’s an additional list item saying “otherwise poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety of United States persons.” Who determines that?

The definition of a Scary Action is ridiculously broad. It covers any financial or technology-related action. That could refer to a lot of different things.

While the bill is clearly intended only to prosecute people doing Really Bad Things, the wording is kind of vague in some places, and could be used to prosecute others, too.

Specifically, I’m thinking about this clause:

“no person may cause or aid, abet, counsel, command, induce, procure, permit, or approve the doing of any act prohibited by, or the omission of any act required by any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under, this Act”

Yeah this could definitely be used for overreach. It’s far too broad. If there was an infrastructure attack on the USA that affected the police dept, and an ACAB armchair activist tweeted “haha karma” would that count as grounds for prosecution? I have a genuine problem with this clause. The loopholes here are ridiculously large.

Overall, it seems as though this bill is aimed at large companies rather than citizens, but there are definitely loopholes for the government to exploit.

#restrict act #tiktok ban #long post

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rvps2001 · 9 months

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Russia-Ukraine Daily Briefing

🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Friday Briefing:

❗ Ukraine attacks Russian navy base near Novorossiysk

- Russian shelling hits a landmark church in the Ukrainian city of Kherson - Zelensky says Ukrainian strength dominates, top officers report progress - US says Russia pitched North Korea on increasing sale of munitions to Moscow - Georgia bans re-export of Western-imported cars to Russia, Belarus - Putin signs the largest number of classified orders in July since 1999 - The 3 Baltic nations plan to accelerate their exit from Russia’s power grid - Blinken urges world to tell Russia: enough using Black Sea as blackmail - Nearly 80 civilians killed in Russia since invasion of Ukraine - Russia targets neighbour Kazakhstan with army recruitment ads - EU agrees to extend the scope of sanctions on Belarus to fight circumvention

📨 More news in a daily newsletter: https://russia-ukraine-newsletter.beehiiv.com/subscribe

💬 Keep up with me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rvps2001

#russia ukraine war #ukraine russia war #ukraine war #news #newsletter #russia #ukraine

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mushi-shield · 1 year

Video

youtube

[Verse 1] They're angry that they will never shut me up I'm making more noise Turn me up or turn me down It's your choice Black lives only matter when they got a corpse to exploit Cause the media made millions off of protests for George Floyd That's called ad revenue They make cash selling you All the crap and the Ads when they broadcast news, ooh The network full of liars Got investment capital and segments sponsorеd by Pfizer And the freedom fighters I feel likе the left just plants them To infiltrate the right its extensive planning Then it happens overnight it's impressive branding Making a million off of shirts that say Let's Go Brandon It's a cash grab Everyone's a lab rat Amazon made billions of dollars from sanitizer and black masks And that's that Funny how the terrorist's who attack Always come from places that are oil rich and have gas Democrats they don't give a damn What is this about? Our military trapped in the middle east can't get them out Heroes are the ones who have the constitution written down Y'all are using hero while describing Kyle Rittenhouse

[Pre-Chorus]

One cent, two cent, three cents, four We get less and they get more Bought and sold since we were born They want money We want war

[Chorus]

Dirty dollars fill their pockets While our coffins fill the ground They make profits solving problems They create to keep us down Dirty money (cha-ching) Dirty money I don't want your dirty money [Verse 2] They might kill me for this song it’s all classified intelligence Don't need to go to war to secretly be gettin' benefits When Russia launches rockets we condemn them, but there's evidence A U.S. politician owns the screws they're assembled with Ain't no war on drugs it's economic You make money off an inmate, every jail cell is profit Our prisons are privately owned Illegal marijuana just means kids smoking weed Turn the dollars in their pockets Let's be honest domestic threats ain't a comparison To nuclear powers who hate the west it's embarrassing Still we label Truckers in the convoy as terrorists And confiscate donations we have no idea where it is A pipeline leaks, price of gas goes higher Stock market crash, everybody get's fired Economy is weak while we're trying to beat a virus One trillion dollars in debt to China We celebrate the smallest battles we're winning So that they can publish the headline that's' gonna' fuel the vision But if we champion the crumbs, then its crumb's that we’re givin' We don't make any progress, we're stuck at the beginning [Pre-Chorus] One cent, two cent, three cents, four We get less and they get more Bought and sold since we were born They want money We want war [Chorus] Dirty dollars fill their pockets While our coffins fill the ground They make profits solving problems They create to keep us down Dirty money (cha-ching) Dirty money I don't want your dirty money [Bridge] It's all about the money, money, money, money, money Not enough soap to scrub it's soaked in blood It's all about the money, money, money, money, money Every time we make a buck, they take from us It's all about the money, money, money, money, money The dollar runs our lives until we die It's all about the money, money, money, money, money It controls your mind and it controlling mine [Chorus] Dirty dollars fill their pockets While our coffins fill the ground They make profits solving problems They create to keep us down Dirty money (cha-ching) Dirty money I don't want your dirty money

#tom macdonald

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